id of him.'

Laputa rose and his eye fell on the dog's back. I could see that he
saw the lie of his coat, and that he did not agree with me.

'The food was welcome, Baas,' he said. 'If you will listen to me I can
repay hospitality with advice. You are a stranger here. Trouble
comes, and if you are wise you will go back to the Berg.'

'I don't know what you mean,' I said, with an air of cheerful idiocy.
'But back to the Berg I go the first thing in the morning. I hate
these stinking plains.'

'It were wise to go to-night,' he said, with a touch of menace in his
tone.

'I can't,' I said, and began to sing the chorus of a ridiculous
music-hall song--

'There's no place like home--but
I'm afraid to go home in the dark.'

Laputa shrugged his shoulders, stepped over the bristling Colin, and
went out. When I looked after him two minutes later he had disappeared.

[1] The circlet into which, with the aid of gum, Zulu warriors weave
their hair.

CHAPTER IX

THE STORE AT UMVELOS'

I sat down on a chair and laboured to collect my thoughts. Laputa had
gone, and would return sooner or later with Henriques. If I was to
remain alive till morning, both of them must be convinced that I was
harmless. Laputa was probably of that opinion, but Henriques would
recognize me, and I had no wish to have that yellow miscreant
investigating my character. There was only one way out of it--I must be
incapably drunk. There was not a drop of liquor in the store, but I
found an old whisky bottle half full of methylated spirits. With this
I thought I might raise an atmosphere of bad whisky, and for the rest I
must trust to my meagre gifts as an actor.

Supposing I escaped suspicion, Laputa and Henriques would meet in the
outhouse, and I must find some means of overhearing them. Here I was
fairly baffled. There was no window in the outhouse save in the roof,
and they were sure to shut and bolt the door. I might conceal myself
among the barrels inside; but apart from the fact that they were likely
to search them before beginning their conference, it was quite certain
that they would satisfy themselves that I was safe in the other end of
the building before going to the outhouse.

Suddenly I thought of the cellar which we had built below the store.
There was an entrance by a trap-door behind the counter, and another in
the outhouse. I had forgotten the details, but my hope was that the
second was among the ba